


take what the water gave

by VesperRegina



Category: Galileo (TV Japan)
Genre: Drowning, Gen, Nightmares, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-01
Updated: 2014-06-01
Packaged: 2018-01-26 22:05:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1704185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VesperRegina/pseuds/VesperRegina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Most drownings are quiet.  Yukawa dreams.  (Spoilers for <em>Manatsu no Houteishiki</em>.  Title from Florence + the Machine.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	take what the water gave

He can't feel the water surrounding him. (A whisper of suspicion, ghost fingers in the suspension... this is not what you think it is.) He should need to breathe, to surface...

Indefinite, infinite, the depths stretch away, like the fabric of space and time (listen, this has happened). Murky blue, the twin of the bowl of the heavens, twilight and (you should be drowning) the forever horizon.

His lungs should be aching under the strain, he should be...

...sinking. Out of his reach. (Narumi, at peace, with her secret beneath her skin. Narumi, a sacrifice. Narumi, victim and perpetrator and child and woman, punishing herself because no one else will.) She drifts, beyond the grasp of his hands. Her choice, her suicidal logic, and he should...

_'I want to ask your opinion on whether I should keep working as a detective or not.'_

(Listen, this has already happened.) He let her go, let her fall away, her breath bubbling from her mouth, and she was too far from him by the time he understood what she was doing, a matter of seconds that frantic thrashing of the water around him would not remedy. His lungs were already protesting at the lack of oxygen, and his options were either-or, only.

_'You have to make decisions about your life on your own.'_

(That was the truth. This is a lie, because this woman's eyes are not Narumi's, this face did not belong to the young woman he'd only just left, in guardianship... this face was less dark, these eyes were more tilted, wider, older.)

She floated beyond his reach. She sank, her hair a dark cloud, her face slack, eyes unseeing.

(The truth is...)

He did not watch her leave. He was the one to go.

Beyond his reach. Bear witness. This is a lie. Narumi lives. Utsumi lives.

All this already happened. One wanted to be punished; one wanted affirmation.

He reaches... 

(This 

is a

dream.

Wake.)

Utsumi's face blends with Narumi's still, the terror of it a pressing weight on his chest. The shock of waking trembles down to his fingertips, quivers into life like the glimmer of sun on the sea, blinding. The sound of his breathing crashes into his perception, waves upon a beach.

(The truth is... you choose your own path.)


End file.
